


Only the Night

by queenseamoose



Series: City of Chains [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6745051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenseamoose/pseuds/queenseamoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke is cold and austere, Hawke is sullen and argumentative, Hawke is stubborn and aggressive. But Hawke also cried herself to sleep the night her baby sister was killed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only the Night

It wasn’t until they made camp—when she was rummaging through her pack and turned around to say, _‘Beth, what did you do with my spare shirt?’_ —that it really sank in. She sat back on her heels, waiting for the sick, numb feeling in her stomach to pass, and when it didn’t, she stood and stalked to the edge of camp. No one noticed her leaving; if they did, they didn’t say anything. Aveline and Leandra had retired almost immediately; muffled sobs were still emanating from her mother’s bedroll, while only a slight quivering from Aveline’s hinted at the warrior’s tears. Carver, on the other hand, sat by their meager fire, whittling at a chunk of wood with sharp, desperate strikes. Her brother hadn’t looked at her once the entire evening—or, despite Leandra’s cajoling, spoken a single word or eaten a single bite.

She didn’t know where she was going, or even if she was going anywhere at all—only that she had to get away, to distance herself from the morose gloom of camp. Back in Lothering, there would have been a creek, a fence, a tree—some natural marker to say _stop, far enough_. But out here on the road, there was nothing but blackness and a faint hint of smoke on the breeze—nothing to stop her as she melted into the dark. The glow of the campfire was fading behind her, and only the pounding in her head and the echo of her boots on dusty stone filled her senses, the rhythm leading her further into the night.

The breeze whipped past her again, this time carrying a chill rather than the stench of burning darkspawn, and she shivered. Rubbing her bare arms, she took a step further—and froze as her boot sank into something soggy. Well. There was her far-enough sign. It abruptly dawned on her how stupid she’d been—camp had long since faded into the distance, she couldn’t see a  hand in front of her face, and although the witch had taken care of any nearby darkspawn, Maker only knew what wild animals roamed nearby. With the way her luck was going, some monstrous creature would emerge from the swamp she’d wandered into and devour her whole. Leandra would pitch a royal fit in the morning—and then probably send them wandering back the wrong way, straight in the direction of the darkspawn. And Carver, being the idiot he was, would decide to take them on all on his own and get himself killed. And then Leandra would break down in a hysterical mess and all but turn herself over to the darkspawn, and that’d be it. The entire Hawke family wiped out, having all fallen victim to their own stupidity.

A spurt of rage shot through her veins at the thought, and she clenched a fist, gritting her jaw. Her blood was boiling, and she was overwhelmed with the urge to _hit_ something, to beat it to a pulp and then tear it apart with her bare hands—at this point, she’d even welcome a horde of darkspawn. Her hands ached to grip her staff, to summon all her mana and unleash her fury in a blast of magic—flames, she decided. Flames suited her wrath, but she was cold, so cold, and this time, it wasn’t the wind’s doing.

And then without warning, she was crying, heaving sobs wracking her body as hot tears coursed down her cheeks. Bethany had been the stupid one, charging the way she did. She hadn’t hesitated, not even for a moment—neither to call for assistance nor to strategize a plan of attack. What had she been _thinking_? Even worse, was it her fault? Having grown up with the damn _queen_ of stupidity, perhaps she should have been watching her more closely, in anticipation of her doing something…well, stupid. 

But did it matter? Either way, Beth was gone. They’d never squabble over clothes again, or argue over whose turn it was for chores. They’d never sneak off into the woods again, staffs in hand, to practice spells away from prying eyes. She’d never awaken in the night to hear her sister mumbling in her sleep, or in the early morning to hear her humming as she tiptoed around the room they shared, preparing for her daily visit to the Chantry.

She laughed bitterly, pressing a fist to her mouth in attempt to stifle her sobs. _No more_ , she begged—of the Maker, of fate, of _anyone_ —but there was only the night to hear her.  _No more. I can’t take any more_.

Her tears were drying in the wind, and although her grief did not lessen, she was dead tired, standing alone in the middle of a freezing-cold bog, and the last two members of her family were waiting somewhere in the darkness behind her. Scrubbing away the last of the tears, she slowly turned and began to pick her way back the way she’d come, hunched against the relentless wind. Soon enough, the glow of the fire reappeared, and before she knew it, she was stumbling back into camp.

It was silent now, with both her mother and Aveline gone still. Although Carver still sat by the fire, his head was bowed, and his whittling had fallen to the ground, discarded. She didn’t bother to attempt to wake him, instead unfurling her own bedroll and tugging off her boots. But before she lay down, she quietly withdrew her extra blanket from her pack and tiptoed over behind her brother to drape it across his shoulders. And then she crawled into her bedroll to silently weep a few more hours until dawn.


End file.
